Manchester United's Struggles Continue After Draw with Fulham

United escaped Craven Cottage with a point. They left with a warning.

A late, deflected strike from Matheus Cunha spared them a third straight league defeat, cancelling out Lisandro Martinez’s early own goal in a laboured 1-1 draw against Fulham. The scoreboard said “rescued.” The performance screamed “problem.”

Gary Neville did not bother dressing it up.

From the Sky Sports gantry, the former United captain watched a side he barely recognised in attitude, let alone quality. The lack of intensity, the absence of bite without the ball, the eerie calm as Fulham passed around them – it all left him incredulous, and it all led him directly to manager Michael Carrick.

“Michael has got to stop defending them,” Neville said, his patience clearly shredded by what he had seen in west London. He understood the instinct – the loyalty to the dressing room, the desire to shield players publicly – but he made it clear that the manager’s protective stance no longer matched the evidence on the pitch.

Carrick had rejected the notion that his team were passive during the contest. Neville could hardly believe it.

“I get why he's defending them; he's loyal, he wants his players to work for him, and obviously there's a long way to go in the season,” Neville admitted. “Michael is of course saying something different to us than he is saying privately. That would've really worried me.”

The concern ran deeper than a single result. This was the third poor display in a row: a league defeat to Manchester City, a Carabao Cup collapse against Brighton, and now this flat, disjointed outing at Fulham. The pattern was becoming harder to ignore.

Neville warned that, even if there is no immediate pressure on Carrick from above, the performances themselves will eventually corner him.

“People will ask questions about him, but he knew that when he took the job,” Neville said. “But there's no panic in that sense – no one is putting pressure on Carrick – but if those types of performances continue, he will find himself in a lot of trouble. They've got to work harder than that for him.”

For Neville, this was about something more fundamental than tactics. It was about work rate, pride, the basic non-negotiables of playing for Manchester United.

“I've never seen a Man Utd team walk out of possession as much as that,” he said, still stunned by the lethargy. Carrick’s post-match insistence that there was “nothing wrong with the team's energy” clashed violently with what Neville felt he had just witnessed.

“Both teams were the same. I called them mannequins. I've never seen a United team walk around as much as that. No alertness, no aliveness. No 'on your toes'. You should always be on your toes.”

The harshest verdict came when he zoomed in on the opening stages of the second half, a period when United should have been hunting a response and instead drifted through the motions.

“I'm always very careful to say that, but in those first 15 minutes of that second half, Man Utd and generally for the first 60 minutes, were a genuine disgrace. Nowhere near good enough without the ball.”

Cunha’s late equaliser changes the table, not the temperature. United avoided another defeat, but they did not escape the accusation that they are sleepwalking through games.

Carrick has his point. Neville has his point. The players, now, have nowhere to hide.